There’s a pervasive idea in science fiction that the stars themselves could power our adventures among the stars. In Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku flies away on a Solar Sailer, while the Star Trek franchise has long suggested that solar sails are the precursor to quicker, more advanced space travel, like warp drive. In a recent episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, “Shades of Green,” a solar sail race is presented as an archaic way for people to get around the cosmos. Tendi and other Orions are tested by traveling in very old solar sail tech. While faster-than-light travel is a debatable topic in hard science circles, the idea of solar sails is much more concrete.
But, can solar sails in real life do what they do in science fiction? And are solar sails the future of post-orbital spaceflight? Inverse got in touch with NASA’s Les Johnson to get a sense of what’s fact and what’s science fiction when it comes to solar sails.
First off, solar sail technology is very real right now. As Les Johnson tells Inverse, “Under the right circumstances … solar sails can propel a spacecraft to a higher speed than any other propulsion system packaged into the same volume.”
Johnson is NASA’s principal investigator behind NASA’s “Solar Cruiser” concept, which Johnson points out is viable in the near future. However, those “right circumstances” require a spaceship to already be outside of Earth’s orbit, and somewhere else entirely. As Johnson explains, the right circumstances for solar sail spacecraft to operate today would entail a
This “Antiquated” Star Trek Tech Could Actually Be The Future Of Space Travel
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